2007 NMRA Train Show
Its been a busy week preparing for this years NMRA Train Show in Detroit! We are all loaded up and ready to head out in the morning. Fortunately for us Detroit is only a three hour drive, so that eliminates a bit of the stress. If you are interested in reading about our previous train show experiences, have a look here.
Off until Tuesday July 31.
-Tim
a frequently asked question.
I run across this question on discussion forums quite often and at one time asked the question myself. Designing as much railroad track as we do the size of the ties is an oft asked question.
While we have our “standard” sizes we use, and these closely match what is typically given as a response by other modelers on the forums, the answer to this question is simple… there are no standard sizes.
There are so many variations used by every railroad that realistically there are no standard sizes. When track was initially laid the standard sizes of a particular railroad were met, most of the time. But after years of use and maintenance most of those standards went out the window in favor of what ever was on hand at the time.
I see evidence of this quite often, as shown in the above image. These ties are over 14″ wide! On a CNR mainline at that. The standard size should be 9″. These weren’t exceptions either, few of the ties are of similar size. Some of them even looked like logs!
So if being quoted hard and fast numbers for tie sizes, be suspicious….
-Tim
Delhi, Ontario
Its interesting how a zoom lens can distort distance. The two images above are of the same bridge, the top image was taken with a 300 mm zoom lens and the lower one with a 17 mm wide angle lens. Clearly the bridge in the lower image looks longer, but it is the same bridge. In fact the lower picture was taken from further out on the bridge than the upper one.
This also causes any defects in the rails to be exaggerated quite a bit, making the rail look much rougher than it really is.
-Tim
